CNBC's Ylan Mui reports on President Joe Biden's bipartisan infrastructure deal. For access to live and exclusive video from CNBC subscribe to CNBC PRO: [ Ссылка ]
President Joe Biden declared Thursday that the White House has struck an infrastructure deal with a bipartisan group of senators after discussing the massive plan to improve the nation’s roads, bridges and broadband earlier in the day.
“To answer the direct question: We have a deal,” Biden said at the White House.
The president, flanked by senators including Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and Mark Warner, D-Va., added that he would honor the latest policy framework that focuses on “hard” infrastructure.
“They have my word. I’ll stick with what we’ve proposed, and they’ve given me their word as well,” he said. “None of us got all that we wanted. I didn’t get all that I wanted. But this reminds me of the days we used to get an awful lot done up in the United States Congress.”
The lawmakers have worked for weeks to craft an infrastructure package that could get through Congress with support from both parties. Deciding how to pay for the plan has posed the biggest challenge.
The framework will include $579 billion in new spending, the White House said.
$312 billion will go to transportation, with $109 billion invested in roads, bridges and other major projects, $66 billion in passenger and freight rail and $49 billion in public transit
Only $15 billion will go toward electric vehicle infrastructure and electric buses and transit, a fraction of what Biden first proposed
The plan would put $266 billion into nontransportation infrastructure
It includes $73 billion for power, $65 billion for broadband and $55 billion for water
“The investments we’ll be making as a result of this deal are long overdue,” Biden said after announcing the agreement, saying it would create jobs and help to close the “digital divide” by expanding internet connection.
The group proposed various methods to pay for the plan. They do not include an increased gas tax or electric vehicle user fee, which Democrats opposed, or an increase to the corporate tax rate, which Republicans resisted.
The proposal calls to increase IRS enforcement to ensure wealthy people pay the taxes they owe. It also would redirect unused state and local coronavirus relief funds to infrastructure. The framework proposes private-public partnerships and bonds, among a bevy of other potential funding mechanisms.
Twenty-one senators — 11 Republicans and 10 Democrats — have backed the infrastructure framework. They will likely need to win support from Democratic leaders and win over the vast majority of the caucus to garner the 60 votes needed to pass the bill in the Democratic-held Senate.
Some Senate Democrats criticized the smaller bipartisan deal as they seek spending to expand child care and fight climate change. However, at least one skeptical Democrat signaled he would back the plan if it was paired with a larger bill focused on child and elder care, education, health care and climate change.
The current deal is “way too small. Paltry, pathetic,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said minutes before Biden’s announcement. “It has to be combined with a second much more robust, adequate package, to be deserving of a vote, and I am very hopeful that it will be followed by another package.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., stressed that “we have to have the whole thing, not just not just cleave off a little piece of it.”
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